


Tragedy, Comedy, or the Cat

by CornerSwords



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Character Study, I Don't Even Know, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kwami & Miraculous Lore, Kwami Swap, Other, Plagg Is Breaking The Law, Plagg Is Not Going To Let This Angst Turn Into Dead People, Plagg Is So Done (Miraculous Ladybug), Plagg fought the law and the law is fucking dead, Poor Plagg (Miraculous Ladybug), Short One Shot, Sort Of, Stream of Consciousness, The Magic Law, also kinda dark, also plagg is absolutely not fucking having it, and the scene is the bit where Plagg says Fuck This, basically chat blanc but its marinette, from Plagg's perspective, it's weird poetic bullshit don't think too hard about it because I certainly didn't, like that is the fic, look basically this fic is one scene from a dark au, mostly it's just weird philosophy bullshit, no beta we die like idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:22:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CornerSwords/pseuds/CornerSwords
Summary: Stream of consciousness through a scene in a Kwami Swap AU that went bad in ways that aren't really relevant, because Plagg decided he was going to have Angst and then that he was going to hunt down Angst with a fucking shotgun. Possibly metaphorically, but somehow I doubt it.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Plagg & Tikki, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Plagg, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Plagg, Plagg & Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug), Plagg/Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Tragedy, Comedy, or the Cat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csad/gifts).



> So yeah you might wanna read the tags because I have no idea what I'm doing. Mostly keep in mind that the more you get caught up in the details of when and where and what actually happened, the worse this experience is going to be; all you really need to know is that Plagg ended up with Marinette instead of Adrien, things went horribly bad in some no doubt very dramatic angstfic fashion that I'm not going to write, and basically this is The All Plagg All The Time Introspection Roadshow.

"Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance?"

~ John Updike

"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look."

~ Aldous Huxley

* * *

Looking back upon the whole cursed mess, it seemed almost too obvious what had gone wrong – who had _been_ wronged. It was all too easy to see when and where and why, and oh, of course, the Mistake he had made.

He had given up alcohol a long, long time ago. Cheese had never filled the gap, had never quite filled his stomach and calmed his mind like that last bitter drop of golden-brown nectar in the Hanging Gardens had, but cheese had never lulled him to sleep while wonders crumbled and cities sank. Cheese had never quieted him when he shouldn’t have been silent, had never let him run away from his own damned faults.

He hated it for that, sometimes. But some things couldn’t change, and his tendency to misplace aggression was one of ‘em.

“You’d get it, Kid. I really think you would.” Plagg murmured, Miraculous held still under his tiny butt as he readied himself for the fall. Spotted fabric wrapped in comfortingly around him, holding him down in the dark when the world’s ways tried to pull him up, a quiet embrace from his other – _better_ – half.

Just their damned luck. Every time.

“I – Plagg, I lost her again.” Adrien – Tikki’s kid – _damn it, she had done so well and he had fucked it all up just like always_ – gasped out, words clear between heaving, greedy breaths in the way only one of theirs’ could be, stumbling to a halt wherever he had hit the ground. “I _lost her,_ I can’t – I can’t keep up with her like this-”

“Calm down before your heart explodes, Kid.” he advised, poking his head out of the slim pocket he had been tucked into. “You’re thinking too much.”

 _“I don’t think enough.”_ Mister Bug hissed, just a little bit of Tikki shining through, and maybe she had done a damn fine job with the Kid but she always forgot that humans just couldn’t handle minds that worked like they did.

Like they always had, and always would. It wasn’t Tikki’s fault, but who could you blame if you couldn’t blame God, right?

A nub of an arm, barely the size of an infant’s finger, smacked into Adrien’s side with more force than really should’ve been possible for someone Plagg’s size. Not much, in the grand scheme of things, but enough to get his attention.

 _“You think too much._ Thinking isn’t gonna help you right now, Kid. Magic doesn’t think.” he snarled, maybe a little aggressive, maybe a little too lenient. He had fucked up with his own Kit. He had fucked up like he always did.

Nature was no excuse. Not for them. Not _now._

But it _was_ something they could use.

“Magic _feels._ So feel.”

Wide eyes, small pupils. Fear – Adrien reeked of it, even through the suit. Even through the Ladybug.

That was what made mortals so different from them, after all. So strange and interesting and wonderful, it made Plagg want to _puke_ – change. Fear, struck through its heart with heady, paralyzing determination – slathered in sorrow and guilt and self-doubt, the dreadfully dense mix of angers that flavored every level different as it dissolved into every little strand of hate and frustration, and under it all, that one single tiny little drop of delicate, silent affection that hadn’t been drained from the cask with the rest of the dregs. Lock in the cellar where the air is heavy with summer’s fondest spices, let ferment only the blink of an eye, and uncork to find the love that would end the world, grand beyond measure and terrible beyond comprehension.

Humans, Plagg could never understand – could never understand how they couldn’t feel their own emotions, roiling and shrieking and _changing_ in ways utterly alien, so that in one moment the Kid was ready to fling himself from the building and scream _Spots Off_ if it would bring him even a step closer to the lost Kit and the next his hates had all vanished under a screaming tide of silence and his soul was nearly screaming in triumph as he burst into a full sprint again, following a trail ethereal even to gods.

When had it been? Not even the gardens – the night before. They were young, then, he and her, old as the universe but oh so achingly young in the world, mere seconds into the life of Humanity’s shared History. Plagg had complained, as he always did – had moaned and yowled about how _fickle_ they were, how even the one they hailed as _stubborn as the mighty ox_ was wont to simple bliss for only the merest indistinguishable fraction of time before deep and aching sorrow stole in. Frustrations that he knew even now, never cutting deeper but never closing even the barest bit – it was Plagg’s nature in at least part, frustration, anger, and he had indulged them so much more in those early millennia.

Tikki’s words were still clear as the stars had been that night, when Plagg looked up to them and begged for an answer, for understanding, even knowing that his own self could not change no matter how much he screamed-

“To the mortal, truth is impossible… but it is also necessary. Everything they see, hear, feel, it is reality to them even if only for the instant that they experience it.”

She had smiled at him, sad and soulful, and he had – he might have felt it like he never felt anything ever again, he might have told himself, Plagg could scarcely even remember – _even when these stars burn out, and life itself dies screaming in silence, I will remember you._

“That is why we have no sibling of Truth. That is why you and I are highest among their true gods. Even though we are unchanging, we are how they Change their Truths.”

He had been young, the first and last time he had felt anything at all.

It had _hurt._

Perhaps, he reflected, that was why he had drunk himself silly the next day. Perhaps that was why he had sworn on the only one he had ever believed in that he would never drink again.

Perhaps, that night in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Plagg had felt just a touch of the Truths that were Tikki’s.

But there was no more time for the ideas he had hidden, all these quiet eons. Not with the streak of blinding white that almost sent the Kid’s skittish heart bursting from his chest. Not with the scent of hate hate _hate_ burning away the lower incense of winter’s first frost, the grand truth that had taken such terrible root in the Kit’s soul.

That humans could be so unspeakably alien and yet so achingly familiar… it confused Plagg, sometimes. Frustration.

“Chat!” Adrien screamed, and again it all changed, from one instant to the next. Tender, trembling hope, so small and weak and yet with shared strength it washed away fear that would have held Shuruppak through that fateful storm – dragged sorrow and guilt and horrible twisted rage to drown under its waves and-

-and-

“Bug.”

-and it didn’t.

“Please… don’t follow me.”

This was why he had never liked Nooroo, really.

“I have to finish this,” it wasn’t any different. The core of emotion that the butterfly had latched on to – even the Kid couldn’t move it, couldn’t break it, not that easily at least. She was stuck.

Humans were supposed to change.

“You’re not going to make things right like this, Chat,” the Kit wasn’t going to be able to break out of her spiral like this, wasn’t going to be able to get rid of the poison that had gotten into her head, into her heart, not by finishing the fight.

Humans were supposed to understand.

“…I don’t really care if anything is wrong or right about it,” not even a drop in the bucket – blank incomprehension, she had always been too self-sacrificing, too quick to give away pieces of her own damn soul. It was always like that, always, but it was like that for _Tikki’s,_ not his, not his Kits – that wasn’t supposed to change.

Humans were supposed to feel.

“And what about after?! What about when this is all over,” but it was all mud and mist now, no way of telling which hearts would shatter and which would survive when this all shook out, and Plagg couldn’t fix what was broken, that had never been part of him.

Humans were supposed to die.

“…there isn’t an after.”

Humans were supposed to _live._

 ** _“There will be.”_** Plagg’s voice snarled, Plagg’s body snarled, Plagg snarled, and maybe humans weren’t supposed to wear Creation and Destruction like second skins, so who cared about any of the other rules anymore? His Kit had suffered, and he hadn’t helped her.

He should have helped her.

“Adrien, put the ring on.”

Breath caught. Turmoil. Emotion, emotion, emotion, and maybe Plagg didn’t understand it but fuck it all, he’d figure it out, he’d find the stone every Law was set in and leave it ash in the wind if he had to, _but he wasn’t losing another Kit._

“I – you – the Ladybug and the Black Cat-”

“Kid, I’m going to tell you something that’s true,” he said, and he wasn’t allowed to feel anything, not really, so he smiled because he was so, so happy and the rules had never actually mattered, not before he was bound to the ring hovering paralyzed over the Kid’s finger and not even for a moment after, “I’ve never given anyone a second chance, not even once in my entire life.”

It was midnight, then it wasn’t. Winter Solstice. His birthday.

“Today, I’m going to try.”

Adrien put on the ring, and Plagg smiled.

Because he was Romeo, the love that ends the world, and he was **done** playing by someone else’s rules.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I _said_ I didn't know what I'm doing. So frankly, this was your fault for indulging my obvious insanity.
> 
> And csad's, for inspiring me. Blame that guy.


End file.
